EIGHT YEARS.
What's the biggest change? Twitter. Twitter has changed everything. Twitter is easy. Twitter is quick. Twitter is short. Twitter is accessible. So many things have happened since I've been twittering, that I haven't been blogging. I started to integrate my tweets into the blog... but it was a manual effort and thus... a bit intensive. Did I keep it up? Well... no. Should I? Oh yes. Ideally, I would love to have that integration to be automatic. I think I can do that - with an update to MovableType (my blogging software). It's not like I don't have the time available... perhaps I just lack the motivation? Oh hell yes.
So... all I can say is that I'm going to TRY to keep things going... try. I've said it so many times before. I am saying it again. Perhaps I just can't give up on some things.
]]>Well, I've launched into that land, too. You'll see a badge (I hope) in the sidebar that should have my tweets in it... If I'm REALLY lucky, I'll be posting more mundane things there than here... I don't know yet... not sure how this will all eventually shake out...
Going to be a bit odd, though... there will be some cross-posting happening between this blog and Twitter through TwitterFeed.
]]>SIX YEARS.
Last year, I said
It's feeling like work, now, to keep updating the blog... which means that I barely limped into my 5 year anniversary... oops... Blogiversary... how can it be that I'm viewing something that I've done for five years as hard work? Maybe I'm just too tired.. and not very motivated...
Here it is another year later, with the blog in probably in even worse shape than I had anticipated.
There is something that has happened in my life over this past year or so, that I realized that I haven't blogged about... and perhaps I'm starting to understand the roots of this motivation problem. Perhaps it's a bit more than I had realized a year ago. Even my podcast has suffered - hard to pull the shows together (though I have some content... and even though a very recent hard drive crash destroyed an awful lot of originally recorded audio material).
I can't promise how often I will post... until I find a way to fix the motivation thing... which, quite possibly, is just a symptom of this one item that i haven't blogged about, but... suffice it to say, at least my family and friends have a clue what my problems are....
... Now... don't get any ideas that this is some maudlin goodbye post.. oh, NO! I REALLY want to keep this up.. get the podcast alive again.. and resume my life the way it was just a few short years ago... back to my mundane life...
]]>FIVE.
Looking back recently, I can see that I haven't been posting regularly... I guess I'm a bit of a funk, trying to come to grasp getting older, having more and more things to do at work keeping me busy, and the sameness of the everyday things... not much changing from day-to-day. I suppose the word "mundane" really applies to me now. It just feels more and more the same each day, which isn't very stimulating to come up with a post.
I think the other thing that's affecting me is, believe it or not, my twice-monthly podcast. When I consciously think of something, I now think of "how can I grab audio of that?" instead of "I have to blog about that".
It's feeling like work, now, to keep updating the blog... which means that I barely limped into my 5 year anniversary... oops... Blogiversary... how can it be that I'm viewing something that I've done for five years as hard work? Maybe I'm just too tired.. and not very motivated...
Maybe I can get into the swing of things at a better clip after the first of the year... get through the holidays... get some rest...
]]>If anyone has problems, drop me a comment.
]]>Actually, about my nephew Jackson and my sister Diane.
Diane has made the leap into blogging - blogging all about Jackson, her son.
Even though she'll probably never link to me, please go over and visit her blog and check out the great pictures of Jackson!
I've already added her site to my Blogroll...
So, go to a little ditty.....
]]>I've written about my life - my mundane, "every day", routine, unremarkable, boring life - and I've written it for me as the audience. If you come to this site regularly, irregularly or even not at all but read through RSS, I want to sincerely thank you for stopping by and reading. To have ANYBODY read this blog makes be feel wonderful, especially if you're not a family member or don't even know me!
I've written about people that I have lost forever, I have written about people that have come into my life. I just write about the things I do, the things that interest me, the people that interest me. As I wrote two years ago:
I don't get a lot of traffic here because of that. I'm not a popular guy - I just write about the things I do in my life along with a few pieces about things I like/dislike or just catch my eye. I don't try for anything deep, anything philosophical, political or edgy. It's just me. I don't have a lot of friends out there who read this blog, and certainly not a lot of family members either. I'm OK with that. I guess if I write for an audience of one (me), I won't be all that disappointed in my traffic or my lack of comments or even the frequency of what I write.So, if I'm just writing for me, hopefully I won't disappoint me by trying to keep writing almost every day. I feel the need to do that - don't know why. Perhaps it's this feeling that may, just maybe, if people stop-by regularly and actually read this thing, then I should keep it going for as long as I can. Maybe I can get one or two more readers that way.
So - what in the world am I going to try to do to add to the Mundane experience here? I have one word:
How about mine?
Well, I don't have high hopes, but I want to give it a try. It'll be an off-shoot of what you see here, except you'll be hearing it instead. Some things may only be in the podcast, some things may only be here in the blog. We'll sort it out as we make the journey.
I realize I've had some big issues posting regularly. I'm not setting a schedule for the podcast. We'll just see how it plays out. I'm just an average guy in his late 40's with an itch to share his mundane, "every day", routine, unremarkable, boring life.
It may mean nothing to you, but it means something to me.
Thank you all for visiting. I truly appreciate you taking your time to do that. Make yourselves known every once in a while be leaving a comment or two and signing the appropriate GuestMap. Please stop-by again and see how this podcast-thing turns out!
WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?????
You are sucking my bandwidth dry! There's not that much here to see, so what the hell are you doing?
So, that's it! NO MORE BYTES FOR YOU!
Time for a DENY IP for a while
Update: Let's add some Russian ones, too - 85.30.196.64 & 62.140.245.2
The Tribune had an article that said talked about reading blogs at work. I guess this started because the writer was... reading blogs at work and found this at Romensko (which I guess started because of something that was brought up at Ad Age).
Apparently, employees spend about 9% of their work-time reading blogs. And the Tribune article thinks that one of the reasons is that reading a blog looks like you're doing work (even though the blog being read is not work-related). As the Tribune writer (Steve Johnson) says: "To a boss standing at, say, 20 paces, reading a blog resembles work." Apparently, if you look at some blog stats, you'd see that page hits "peak during working hours, then plummet on weekends when, of course, there's no incentive to read them that's quite so strong as productivity avoidance".
Now, my stats start rising dramatically at about 11am and stay there all afternoon and then dip slightly over dinner and it's back up again from 7 to 8. The weekday/weekend usage tracks toward the workweek with the weekends lower.
Still, interesting that we're out on the web reading that many blogs...
Nice tweaks with the interface. Hopefully, the backend is good as well.
]]>Well, I think I got the comments just about figured out. If you use TypeKey, you can go ahead and comment - if you don't, the comments will be moderated.
Now the exciting thing for me is to see that the new MT-Blacklist is just chugging away, doing its work to keep the spam off my comments. I mean, look what it's done in a day:
And the whole new comment moderation system in MovableType 3.15 is just a breeze to handle all this stuff.
I'm happy. Now I can just sit back... and think of more mundane crap to blog about...
]]>Did everything make it over? Well, I think so. Comments may still be a bit wonky (looks like they're going to be Moderated for a while, so if you don't see your comments right away, you'll know why), but at least I've upgraded successfully to MovableType 3.15! Hey, I'm just happy some of this publishes! More some other time, I'm just hoping I've got everything up and running that I wanted to!
I am being FORCED to shutdown my blog. Yes, the administrator of my webhosting service suspended my account and I am not being allowed to run MovableType on his host.
Why? Well the CPU usage for mt.cgi shot through the roof and was averaging 80%.
Why? Because of a certain thing going on in the industry - Comment Spamming. As ANY user of MovableType knows, MT just doesn't hit a CPU utilization of 80% and sit there. MT only runs when you - as an author - are posting or rebuilding. How often is that? For me - it's barely once or twice a day. And if you use the product, you know how quick that happens.
So you just know that the issue are those damn Comment Spammers. I'm running MT 2.661 and MT-Blacklist. While this has been helpful to stop a lot of the spamming, it still happens. the MT log is filled with rejected attempts to comment. I was also starting to get hit with Trackback Spam as well.
Version 2 of MT - as far as I recall - DID perform poorly when a spammer attacked a site. I have been putting-off upgrading because of other plugs-ins I use and there compatibility with MT 3. It's been getting so bad lately that I didn't give a damn - I was going to upgrade anyway.
Then I got suspended. I guess the reason why I am just SO PISSED-OFF RIGHT NOW is that I feel that this was a knee-jerk reaction that was a bit out my control, and it was happening right in the middle of me deciding to upgrade and potentially fix the issue.
The only reason this website is up right now is the admin renamed the MT directory (and password protected it) and told me I cannot use the product anymore on his box.
He is also NOT allowing me to upgrade to MT 3.15.
So, that's it. I have to shutdown MT. There will be no more additions to this blog for as long as it's on the current webhost box.
Now, that doesn't mean this is over. Oh, no - not by any means. The website will remain up and you can always view the archives here. THE COMMENT AND TRACKBACK FEATURES OF MY BLOG ARE NOW INOPERABLE.
My INTENT is to find a a new webhosting service, preferably one that understands MT (I have a feeling that the admin of this host has no clue what the product is or does).
If anyone out there has any recommendations for a webhost that has good pricing, good service, and may have a clue about MovableType, PLEASE CONTACT ME IMMEDIATELY. I have one lead that seems to have good pricing with what I think is GREAT bandwidth and GREAT storage. And let's be frank - it's all about the money. I ain't making any money from this site.
I mean, for cripes sake - this is just a personal website with a bunch of pictures and a blog, people! It's not like it's a huge e-commerce site!
I really didn't want to move - I've been using a reseller for this website, and Jeff has been absolutely great over the years. I really don't want to leave him, but the admin has forced my hand and I don't have a choice.
*sigh*
So, thanks Jeff for the great service over the years. Thank you to the readers who have stopped by here over the years.
I hope to see you within a few days/weeks (better not be months!) when we're back up and running at a new host!
Don't forget, drop me a line with recommendations! Also, if you know of anybody (even yourself) that would be interested in transferring MT and the blog(s) to the new host, I am willing to entertain hiring somebody to just do it for me (my time is a bit limited recently, and if I can (reasonably) pay somebody to pick-up my MT/MySQL installation and plop it down on a new host, I would love to do it. Remember - MT is shut down and do I have any valid recent exports of my data? HELL NO! Can we do the transfer just doing MySQL exports?) I am even willing to entertain a website redesign (for $$$) if anyone wants to quote me that as well. Any way, please help me!
SEE YA!
]]>What's been more of an effort has been trying to clean-up after those damn comment spammers. I'm using MT-Blacklist, but I'm still on MT 2 so I think it's time to go to MT 3 and get the new blacklist pieces and new comment pieces and hopefully things will work out.
I'm saying this publicly because if things get a bit "wonky" here, you'll know why.
]]>